Not to mention the fact that any person alive today is potentially the root of a vast ancestral tree of countless millions of those future unborn, each of which

Not to mention the fact that any person alive today is potentially the root of a vast ancestral tree of countless millions of those future unborn, each of which is potentially the root of other vast ancestral trees, and so on... Ill effects suffered by these people may well be passed on through these generations (sins of the father, so to speak). Or worse, if they do not make it to procreation entire continents of future lives will be snuffed out. The moral weight of this absurd postulation, if anything, swings toward the past rather than the future.